Group

R2NNTG
My group supports several hundred switches across all of our buildings and locations, but we don't always receive reliable or timely information about events that change the local density of wired connectivity needed to support constituents and their various devices. This frequently results in a significant amount of wasted switch port capacity and wasted electricity when a specific location is vacated or its use changed and we are not told, leaving a 48-port switch where 24 ports or less would be sufficient for example (worst of all is the scenario where we purchase additional switch hardware to support growth or expansion in a location while under-utilized switch hardware needlessly burns power and annual maintenance $ elsewhere.
The referenced datasource here is expected to help this situation. It is not a switch-by-switch, port-by-port uptime measurement, rather it shows the percentage of ports with link (ie in use) over a range of time. Its value is expected to come from providing a longer-term trend of ports in use for specific locations by highlighting those locations where switches can be removed due to persistent over-capacity, but it can certainly be effective tracking use-cases with shorter term periods as well. It is extremely well-suited to presentation on a dashboard.
Note that this datasource was built for Juniper switches [and includes specific interface filtering so you will need to adjust that (along with Applies To and any thresholds) to meet your needs] but it is most likely not difficult to substitute other vendors' MIB/OID into it.
Much thanks to Josh L on the pro-services team who did all the real development work.
R2NNTG